Accelerated

Details

I teach kids, teens, and adults. Each lesson is packed with homework and
accelerated learning strategies. More on
ages.

About Pete

I’m Peter Croce.
I teach kids how to code in-person and via
FaceTime/Skype. My teaching style emphasizes projects and play.
On day one, you will build your first website from scratch. And you'll
add to it or build something even cooler in every subsequent lesson
during that lesson's homework, a series of instructions called
Code Play.

I have degrees from University of Florida in psychology and
sociology and am an experienced web developer. Thanks to my career
change to web development and my background in social sciences, I have
both experiential and science-backed insight into how best to learn fast
(and how to avoid the mistakes I made along the way).

My teaching style emphasizes accelerated learning by harnessing
the power of play and flow. Each lesson requires the
student understands why something works before they’re allowed to
continue. I’m sociable and encourage students to talk about what
they’re learning, especially because social skills are widely
considered the most important soft skills among developers.

Parents have told me my enthusiasm rubs off on students. I hope you’ll
have a chance to see for yourself.

How'd Code with Pete start?

While catching up with a good friend and former sociology
professor of mine, I told him I had been learning web development,
and he asked if I would teach his daughter how to code. We set up weekly lessons,
in-person when she was in town and via FaceTime/Skype on the weekends she was
with her mother, and both worked well. She loved it. Thinking about
how I would learn to code if I could start over again from the
beginning energized me. Putting together lesson plans, homework,
and assignments I call "Code Play," I found myself in the same
state of flow I embed in the
accelerated, robust learning strategies,
part of what I learned studying psychology and sociology
at University of Florida. While I'm now teaching other students too,
his daughter and I still meet weekly for lessons and she has advanced
farther through my curriculum than any other student.

Accelerated Learning

You might already know what
flow
is and you've definitely experienced it - intense focus while
you're working playing on something you love, when time and space seem
to melt away and you enjoy every minute. My lesson plans are
designed to get students into a state of flow as fast as possible.
That's where the most learning happens, and where they'll develop
the enthusiasm that will propel them toward mastery.

Keeping young brains safe

I'm very serious about keeping kids from becoming too
tech dependent. This stuff can very literally rewire our brains,
for better or worse. I'm committed to using it for the better
and have studied how best to do that.

I've also experienced myself how scatter-brained I get when I use
social media too much and since limiting myself to two short
daily checks, mainly to answer messages, I've been noticeably
happier and more focused. I bring that ethic to my lessons.

Most of what I teach can be done offline.
During lessons, my active and outdoorsy lifestyle inevitably comes up
from time to time and I always take that opportunty to talk briefly
about what activities the student enjoys, and to hopefully leave
the impression that coding is an important part of an increasingly
tech-oriented and still amazingly vast and beautiful natural world.

Ages

My mission is to teach kids and teens how to code. I don't
have a strict age range but I've noticed kids under the age of eight may
have some difficulty learning the concepts we'll dive into.
If you're younger and still interested in learning, click one of
the buttons above to send me a message. I'm sure we can figure
something out.

Let's learn code

Ready to get started? I promise I'm more excited than you are!
Prove me wrong.